Intellectuals is a book by Chinese science writer Wan Weigang, pen name Tongren Yuye, who has a physics background and was formerly a research fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado. It discusses how to think rationally and use evidence in a complex society. Raymond Hou (Raymond) named it the most inspiring book he read in 2017 and wrote a three-part serialized breakdown of how it influenced his thinking for the 柚智夫妻 WeChat public account (Raymond and Yuzu’s joint content brand) in 2018. This writing took place before Raymond moved to Beijing for work, during a period when his writing was taking off (see Beijing Eve: 柚智夫妻 Public Account and ‘365-Day Countdown’ (2018–2020)). It is one of his early examples of publicly digesting ideas from elsewhere and translating them into his own language. For Raymond, the book’s core is not a particular conclusion but an attitude: in an age of information overload, become a “complex modern person” who stays in sync with the world and remains flexible.
Why Raymond chose it as a formative book
At the start of his public-account series, Raymond identifies the central question of the book: material life continues to improve while social stratification keeps widening, and the fundamental difference between rich and poor is not the amount of money or opportunities, but “culture and ideas.” He particularly noted the line “Poverty is not an economic state but a way of thinking,” then added his own interpretation: rational ability has nothing to do with a person’s IQ; understanding a situation fully and making the best decision are abilities one must learn separately. This point had particular meaning for Raymond because it resonated with his blue-collar background and experience of changing his circumstances through self-study (see The Tortoise Philosophy and Blue-Collar Roots). The book’s interdisciplinary writing, which often produces a shock to one’s thinking and attaches original research to every argument, also became a reference for Raymond’s later practice of citing evidence in his writing and avoiding empty talk.
The argument of the three-part series
Following the three trends introduced in the book’s preface, Raymond divided the series into three successive layers of discussion.
The first article asks “Why is conventional wisdom no longer reliable?” He uses the book’s “false cause-and-effect fallacy” to explain the limits of statistical common sense: young people may seem more impulsive than older people simply because impulsive people do not live to old age; women who can have children at 40 may live longer because they are healthy enough to do so, rather than having children later making them live longer. Along this line, he cites Philip Tetlock’s research on expert predictions and concludes, “You might as well flip a coin rather than trust expert predictions.” He uses this to support a judgment he repeatedly cites: “In this era, there are classics, but no authorities.”1 This leads to the book’s metaphor of hedgehogs and foxes: in a complex world, one should be like a fox who knows many small things and stays in sync with change, rather than a hedgehog who explains everything with one big idea.
The nature of education and the “sophisticated egoist”
The second article addresses education and class and is the sharpest in tone of the three. Drawing on the book, Raymond argues that the nature of education is less about imparting knowledge or helping people find a vocation than about “sorting people”: exams are difficult precisely because they are meant to select. He uses the term “sophisticated egoist” (from Peking University professor Qian Liqun) and the critique in Excellent Sheep to argue that students who can only take exams and elite-school students who cultivate many skills only to polish their résumés are fundamentally the same kind of people: they react to external expectations and imitate one another. He further analyzes the history of Ivy League admissions standards and argues that many demands of “well-rounded education” in practice force ordinary people to pretend to be aristocrats; “how much money was spent before going to university is what really matters.” Raymond does not stop at pessimism. He writes that he believes future social elites will not necessarily come from prestigious schools, but from practice and execution across all walks of life: “Make yourself stronger, and let your ability and track record speak for you, rather than your background and school.”2 This judgment connects directly to his later argument for Super Individual.
Free will and not being replaced by machines
The third article concludes with how an individual can retain agency in the age of big data and machines. Citing the marshmallow experiment and the idea of “outliers” in The Road to Character, Raymond argues that most people return to the average after failing a few times and live within a predictable script, while a few people are driven by something different. He singles out the book’s contrast between master and slave: the master asks, “What do I want?” while the slave asks, “What do others want?” True initiative, he argues, is not a reaction based on calculating the probability of success, but a choice driven by a sense of mission and the conviction that “I should be the one to do this.” He summarizes the three articles as a path toward becoming an intellectual: have wisdom (a way to observe the world), insight (recognize the truth about society), and freedom and courage (create new information and step outside existing assumptions).3 The people least like machines are precisely those who can bring unpredictable change to the world.
The book’s influence on Raymond’s thinking
In Raymond’s sources of thought, Intellectuals appears alongside Kevin Kelly, Stoicism, and Tim Ferriss, and is included on his public list of mentors in life philosophy. It provides not an action manual but an underlying stance toward thinking: remain skeptical of single authorities, balance one’s judgment with the fox’s diverse perspective, reframe a difficult background as “a difficulty one can make use of,” and be driven by a sense of mission rather than external incentives. These ideas recur in Raymond’s later content: he emphasizes relying on one’s work rather than educational labels, warns against following trends and avalanche-like fads, and treats personal capability as the foundation for facing uncertainty in one’s era. The three-part series was written in 2018, when his concern was “not being predicted by big data.” Years later, with the rise of AI, his arguments about “leaving the average and doing what machines cannot replace” still show the framework left by this formative book (see Growth Mindset and Learning Methods).
Sources cited
Footnotes
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Hou Zhixun, “【359 Days to Go】How Did Intellectuals Influence My Thinking? Becoming a Complex Modern Person,” WeChat public-account article, 2018-08-21. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “【355 Days to Go】Education? Reality? The Sophisticated Egoist?” WeChat public-account article, 2018-08-25. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “【350 Days to Go】How Not to Be Predicted by Data or Replaced by Machines in the Next Era,” WeChat public-account article, 2018-08-30. View original ↩